Marine Mammal Science

Many people want to become involved with marine mammals such as sea otters, dolphins, seals, manatees, or whales. Perhaps such interest has been sparked by Flipper the dolphin on television or Keiko the orca whale in the popular movie, Free Willy. Interest in marine mammals has also been generated by the many underwater movies publicly pleading for protection of endangered whales. Others are just simply scientifically curious. At any rate, there are many reasons for public interest of a career dealing with marine mammals.

There are about one hundred species of aquatic or marine mammals that depend on fresh water or the ocean for part or all of their life. A few of the marine mammal species include seals, sea lions, dolphins, manatees, whales, polar bears, and sea otters. The scientists which try to understand these animal's population structure, community dynamics, anatomy and physiology, behavior and sensory abilities, diseases, geographic distributions, and ecology are called Marine Mammalogists.

Working with marine mammals is attractive because of the strong public interest in the animals and the work is generally rewarding. However, competition for positions is extremely tough. There are no specific statistics available on employment of students trained as Marine Mammalogists. However, in 1993 the National Board of Science reported a few general statistics for employment of scientists within the US. Over 75% of the scientists were currently employed with over 17% in graduate school. Marine mammal scientists are hired because of their skills as scientists, not because they like or want to work with marine mammals. A strong academic background in simple sciences, such as Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, added with good training in Mathematics and computers, is the best way to prepare for a career in marine mammal science. Persistence and various types of experience make the most qualified individuals. Many times,...

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...The MarineMammal Protection Act
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The MarineMammal Protection Act
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...
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There has been a trend within mammalian evolution towards colonization of land, however in some instances this trend has been reversed; there are three large orders of mammals that have separately re-adapted to marine life, the Cetacea (whales, dolphins and porpoises), the Pinnipedia (seals, sea lions and walruses), and the Sirenia (dugongs, sea cows and manatees). This “re-adaptation” is most extreme in the cetaceans which have evolved a totally fish-like form, masking their true mammalian ancestry (Coffey, 1977). The evolution of cetaceans is so well documented, and is considered one of the best examples of macroevolution, as documented by fossils (Thewissen &Williams, 2002), that is has become known as the Rosetta stone to evolution itself. The most primitive ancestor of cetaceans in fact looked nothing like modern day species; rather, they resembled small wolves. There are six families of prehistoric cetaceans; the pakicetids, ambulocetids, remingtonocetids, protocetids, dorudontids, and basilosaurids. Collectively, they illustrate the transition from terrestrial...

...Dugong Research
Scientific name: Dugong Dugon
Status: Vulnerable to extinction since 1982 (IUCN)
Appendix I of CITES
Taxonomy:
Class Mammalia
Order Sirenia
Family Dugongidae
Genus Dugong
Species dugon
Common Name dugong or sea cow
Local Name duyong or baboy dagat
Description:
The dugong is one of the 24 species of marinemammals present in the Philippine waters. The dugong is the only representative of the order Sirenia to be found in the country. It is a truly unique aquatic animal, being the only herbivorous mammal whose preferred habitat is the sea. Like people and other mammals, the dugong is warm-blooded, has hairs, breathes air and the mother suckles their young. It has been noted that stories on mermaids are attributed to this unique animal due to its striking resemblance  fish-like tail, brownish smooth skin, mammary glands, woman-like genitalia and even its' suckling baby.
An adult dugong can grow to more than three meters in length and can weigh more than 400 kg. Newborns are a little over a meter, while mature animals measure at least 2.5 meters in length (Marsh et al. 1984). The dugong's body is torpedo-shaped with whale-like flukes. The neck is short and indistinct. The flippers are small and short are used for manoeuvring and as a support during feeding or resting at the sea bottom.
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...01.05 – DESIGNING YOUR OWN EXPERIMENT Lesson Organizer
Use this document to help you design your experiment about one of the scenarios from the activity.
Copy and paste the template then insert your information for each of the steps of the scientific
method.
Scenario Topic: Animals in Captivity
Problem
(2 Points)
Research
(2 Points)
Hypothesis
(4 Points)
Why are dolphins that live in captivity not living as long as dolphins in the
wild?
●
●
●
●
●
●
dolphin life spans in the wild
dolphin life spans in captivity
any studies already done on dolphins in captivity
any dolphin experts and their opinions on dolphins in captivity
common health problems of captive dolphins
common health problems of wild dolphins
If dolphins are allowed to live in the wild, then they will live longer than
dolphins that live in captivity.
Procedure
(4 Points)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Analysis
(4 Points)
Conclusion
(2 Points)
Because dolphins usually live for at least forty years, it would be
impractical to study dolphins for their whole lives to see how long
they live in captivity or in the wild. For this reason, studying existing
data would be the best way to determine the effects of captivity on
the life span of dolphins.
The first step would be to collect all possible data about the life spans
of their dolphins from Seaworld or other places that keep dolphins
captive.
Seaworld is usually very protective over their data because they do
not want people to think that their animals are...

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